Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2005-09-08-Speech-4-023"
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"en.20050908.4.4-023"2
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"Mr President, I am encouraged by the Commissioner's fresh approach to this topic. For me, the Northern dimension was an ambitious initiative when it was proposed by the Finnish Prime Minister, Mr Lipponen, eight years ago. Under the first Finnish Presidency it succeeded in turning the EU's attention towards north-eastern Europe.
Today, the Baltic Sea has become an internal sea of the EU, uniting an extremely promising region of 85 million inhabitants with immense economic potential. I should like to make three observations.
My first concern is related to the highly alarming ecological situation of the Baltic Sea, where environmental and toxic hazards are often up to five times higher than in the North Sea area. These growing risks and challenges need to be addressed by more cohesive and long-term policies, using the resources of the EU as a whole. It is high time, therefore, to widen the concept of the Northern dimension beyond cooperation projects with Russia's north-west regions, to cover the whole area of the Baltic Sea including the Kaliningrad area.
Secondly, within the Northern dimension, we should have a special Baltic Sea strategy, just as there is an EU strategy for the Mediterranean. The time has come to draw practical conclusions from the enlargement of the EU to the east and north-east. Clearly, we need a much more creative and balanced approach to these areas, including the creation of concrete financial instruments.
Thirdly, one of the core elements of the Northern dimension is cooperation with Russia. The efficiency and reliability of the EU common foreign policy are being particularly tested in this region. Despite the European Parliament's May resolution on Russia, which called on Member States to resist Russia's attempts to differentiate between old and new Members, unfortunately the date of 8 September stands as a symbol of the separate relations between Russia and some larger Member States. The so-called Schröder-Putin agreement will officially start the building of a new under-sea gas pipeline between Germany and Russia, solidifying the special relationship between those two countries. The side effect of that project would be to expose Poland, the Baltic States and Ukraine to the Russian practice of using economic pressure to advance its foreign policy aims.
If its long-term cooperation with Russia is to be successful, the EU needs to start sending a clear and coherent signal to Moscow. Our first priority must be to convince Russian policy-makers that we take our own common foreign policy seriously."@en1
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